How much do we want to spend on travel and do we have enough money is the question we ask ourselves and you have to ask yourself too while planning your overseas trip.
Why do we and you have to ask this question?
For us as we travel with kids for a long distances and also for a length of time, so our budgeted amount can blow out fast if we don’t plan and the last thing we want to do is get to our destination and not have enough saved to enjoy the holiday, the experience after waiting for so long and organising to get there.
Unless you are a lottery winner or your Aunt Fannie Mae left you a lot of money to play around with you will have to plan and budget for your travel and holidays.
The way we organize our finances for travel is like anything we do, we decide where we want to go, we find out how much it costs completely and then we save for it.
You have to take into consideration a few different things and get all the information you can about the cost and I have to tell you here, be realistic about your cost too, don’t undercut what you think it may cost you as you will regret it later on.
Make a list and add to it is where we start, here are a few things to look at when budgeting your holiday travel;
- Flight costs
- Accommodation cost
- Transfers from Airport
- Taxes in each Country
- Estimate daily spending
- Food costs per day, is breakfast included at accommodation
- Entertainment costs and what you plan to do
- Insurances
- Bills paid at home while you are away, rent, mortgage etc
I am sure there are more expenses to consider than just the above points, if you think of anymore, feel free to leave them in the comments section below, I’ll add to these if I think of anymore too.
Once you get a rough estimate of the costing of your travel holiday by adding up all of the above expenses you can then start getting into the nitty gritty of how much your trip will cost you, then you can see if you can afford it for a start and work back from there.
If I can give any advice here too, have a little in reserve for unplanned experiences too, you may wish you had the extra money to do something while your away, the reason I tell you this is that when you look at it, you may never in your lifetime have the chance to go back to that same place and experience that moment again and for the sake of having a few less drinks on the weekend or bypassing that daily coffee for a month or so might be the difference in doing and having everything you want while you are away, especially souvenir wise.
So, plan your trip and plan your budget for your trip too, you’ll thank yourself later if you do.
And the other great point about planning the extra details is that you get sucked into the trip and the travel a lot more, it forces you to find out more about where you are going and what you can do in that area too, you should enjoy it as you may only be planning for this travel destination once in a lifetime.
By working through this process of working out your cost you may find that there is no way you can afford to go where you were planning to go, unless you save for a few years or more, you’ll have to make the decision to commit to that timeframe or go somewhere cheaper to start with.
Either way, it gives you the base cost for your travel holiday to be planned on, the fun part is working out how you’ll get there, enjoy!
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